>Ordering fast food on a touch screen takes seconds vs. talking to a human being.
Does it though? Verbalizing my order to a person who is highly proficient in using the ordering interface has always been quicker than having to manually find the items I want and enter them.
I can see how this could reduce error, but I think this has more to do with cutting costs than adding efficiency to the ordering process.
- You have good eyesight and can see the menu behind the counter
- You speak the same language as the order taker or they speak your's
- The person behind the counter actually is proficient at the machine
Then you run into the situation where over time people get better at using the kiosk. And much like lines to get subway cards (something replaced by kiosks in Boston long ago), if you get stuck behind someone who is really slow at using it there are usually more kiosks you can move to.
It worked in...
- Subway systems
- Self checkout at grocery stores
- Bank ATMs
Especially that last one. Pretty much the only time I use an actual teller at an ATM is if I need a cashier's check.
I think in fast food it is a bit of a foregone conclusion.
It's still too soon to say those self-checkout machines are a success. There are a few stores (Albertson's, Costco) that have eliminated them entirely, a few large retailers have scaled them back.
Mostly, the assumption was that ringing up items is easy enough for even untrained customers to do it, and that assumption has proved only partly correct. Every time (and I do mean every time) I've stood in line to use them, 1+ customers have needed assistance from a worker (alcohol, voiding an item, price discrepancy, item won't scan, can't find the picture, weird detection on the bag-side...).
Maybe when the generation that grew up with iPads becomes the eldest we'll see full self-checkout implementation, but for now the average customer is not equipped to effectively utilize the technology.
That's interesting. Here if I'm waiting in line it's usually in a situation where the human checkout counters have lines as well. I like the Walmart model... here they have six self-checkouts but one line. So if you're first in line you go to the first one that frees up. Very much superior to having one line per self-checkout.
And in those situations if one backs up you still have at least one alternative that is faster.
It will eventually happen in fast food, but it's not an accident that reason human bank tellers were replaced before fast food cashiers. Menus are complicated things
> I can see how this could reduce error, but I think this has more to do with cutting costs than adding efficiency to the ordering process.
After using the touche screen at McDonalds only the first time was a little slower than going to the human. Now I can punch in my order super quick. As an added bonus I've seen the staff deliver the order to a person's table instead of being chained to a register.
Wish the Wendy's here in Canada would implement that soon. The human keeps try to rush through parts of the order. They're already asking about my drink when I haven't yet got the chance to tell them to hold the disgusting new pickels and red onions. Then it's the same conversiation about me not wanting to substitute fries for an extra item I ordered. Yes, I want them both.
Plus the fact that Wendy's here almost always has only one person on register unless it's exactly lunch or dinner time. And then they usually only have two registers anyways. During less busy times there usualy isn't anyone at the register and you have to wait for them to show up. So they've already cut costs on not having a dedicated register person.
I think it depends on the situation. Perhaps in a true fast-food restaurant, like McDonald's, it might not be quicker. On Wednesday, I stopped at a Sheetz -- a chain of gas stations/convenience stores in the U.S. -- where I ordered a sandwich. It was all done on a touch screen. I picked the sandwich, bread, toppings, condiments via pictures. I was able to add fries or onion rings to the order. It was the first time I had ever done this and it was a clear picture-based interface. When it was placed, out popped a receipt. while my sandwich was being made, I took the receipt to the counter with the cash registers -- for the whole place, not just food orders -- the scanned the bar code on the receipt and I paid. The person taking the money did not have to take my order and was able to handle other customers not ordering food.
Talking to a person is antagonistic to new users and non-native speakers, especially at restaurants (In-n-Out I'm looking at you!) where the printed menu doesn't contain all the available items. McD's had this problem, too, when they switched to all day breakfast but didn't have menu boards that could show both breakfast & lunch/dinner items concurrently.
I'm willing to believe the explanation for this particular case, but I find the Cancellara video to be much more damning, and a pretty strong hint that mechanical doping has found its way into the highest levels of the sport:
The way he just smokes everyone around him without changing his cadence, standing out of the saddle, or even changing the expression on his face seems at least a little suspicious.
It comes down to this: if you're wondering whether going to/staying in college is a good idea, you need to first examine the quality of your alternatives. Are you an 18 year old programmer with solid skills and a job offer in hand? College might not be worth the time or money, fair enough. Are you an 18 year old with no transferrable skills and a weak network? Do yourself a favor and go to college.
Bill Gates had a good alternative, so he dropped out and pursued it. Mark Zuckerberg had a good alternative, so he dropped out and pursued it. My friend from high school who dropped out his sophomore year and now works part-time at Best Buy did not have a good alternative, and now he's kicking himself.
People who say "college is good" or "college is bad" as blanket statements are oversimplifying the issue. Yes, college is still a decent way to get a good job and it can be intellectually enriching, but it takes years out of your life to finish and is (at least in the US) insanely expensive. Yes, college is insanely expensive and it takes years to finish, but it may end up being a good investment, and you may be personally better off for it in the long run. Individuals need to decide, based on their current position, which would be the wiser choice.
This is a well balanced and fair summary. Of course if you want to go to college for the wrong reason you won't be happy, and of course if you drop out and get a job for the wrong reason, you still won't be happy. It's the [expectation vs. endeavor] that needs to be considered.
My guess is that a high minimum wage would incentivize employers to hire citizens instead of new immigrants. There are plenty of anti-immigrant Republicans, as Donald Trump and his current base have illustrated.
Exactly. This panders to their anti-immigration base. If it were a serious proposition, then he would have at least tied the salary to some percentage of the median salary for the job being applied for.
That said, it's still weird because it'll likely piss off the large donors. I understand that he's trying to take some of Trump's base using Trump's tactics, but the only reason that Trump gets away with it is because he's financing his own campaign and couldn't care less about fundraising.
If you're using more common visualizations (e.g. bar chart, line chart, scatter plot, etc) there's an excellent js library called C3 (http://c3js.org/) that wraps charts implemented in D3 with a super-simple api. I'm a huge fan.
I did a lot of test plots with several D3-based charting libs, and found weirdness with C3, such as performance degradation over time, and oddities like including the label for the data as the first entry in the array. NVD3 seemed to be the most mature and sensible of all the libs I tried. http://nvd3.org/
D. He had parents who indulged his interest in programming early on and hired a software engineer to privately tutor him E. Happened to have a group of friends (including Adam D'Angelo, later Facebook employee) at his VERY expensive private high school that were also great programmers by that point, likely helping each other become better.
I'm not saying the first versions of Facebook were ingenious feats of engineering, but Mark easily may have never learned to build things. Considering everything else mentioned in this thread, we can reasonably conclude that a lot of went very right for him at many points along the way.
